For three years a married couple from Nizhny Novgorod is trying to bring to responsibility the extra-departmental guard officers: according to Dmitry Kamzolov and Lyubov Abramova, in February 2014 the police officers brutally beat them up in their own apartment. The investigators refused to initiate criminal proceedings for seven times, and in six of them these refusals were declared illegal. If previously the investigation could not explain the cause, the character and the time when the couple’s bodily injuries development, now, three years after, they came up with an explanation – the injuries developed a day prior to the visit of the police officers.
(Reported by «Seti NN» TV Channel: Lyubov Abramova, Dmitry Kamzolov and the security guards who allegedly attacked them).
As we have previously reported, in February 2014 the Nizhny Novgorod Office of the Interregional NGO «Committee Against Torture» received an application from Mr Dmitry Kamzolov and his partner Ms Lyubov Abramova. According to them, on 10 February, in their own flat, they were severely beaten by private security guards.
According to Lyubov Abramova, before the attack she had had a conflict with a woman who had parked her car on the lawn so that people could hardly walk by. The women had a fight, and Lyubov’s partner Dmitry Kamzolov stopped it. Then the driver threatened the couple with some problems, saying that her husband was a cop.
Lyubov and Dmitry state that at about 8 pm someone rang at their door. Lyubov opened it, and two police officers entered their flat. They neither introduced themselves nor explained the reason for the visit. They started shouting «where is your man?!» Dmitry heard the noise and as well appeared before the door. Mr Kamzolov remembers an immediate blow in the face, so he had no time to say or understand anything, nor could he resist their actions. Then the policemen were beating them with hands and rubber truncheons, and handcuffed them in the end. «They explained nothing», says Ms Abramova, «they were beating us silently, with smiles on their faces». After that Dmitry was brought to Police Department № 8. The same day he was examined by a doctor in a local trauma center, who observed numerous bruises and abrasions. Ms Lyubov Abramova was as well examined and obtained a medical report.
On 20 February 2014 human rights defenders applied to the Sormovsky District Investigative Department of Nizhny Novgorod region Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation with a report on crime against Dmitry Kamzolov and Lyubov Abramova. On 16 April the investigator refused to initiate criminal proceedings. Later on, this investigative department will issue two more refusals, which will be quashed as illegal by the courts.
In November 2016 after lawyers of rhe Committee for the Prevention of Torture applied to head of the Investigative Committee of Russia Aleksandr Bastrykin, the materials of the check based on Mr Kamzolov and Mrs Abramova’s complaint were transferred from the district department to the department for major cases investigation of the Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation for the Nizhny Novgorod region. The superiors of the Sormovsky Investigative Department were also brought to responsibility: head Andrey Kablov received a severe reprimand, his deputy Mariya Chuvstvina – an admonition.
– Unfortunately, transferring the materials to the regional investigative department did not bring the expected results and the work did not become more effective, – comments lawyer with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture Sergey Shounin, representing the interests of the couple. – Now it is the regional Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee that is issuing refusals to initiate criminal proceedings: at the present time four have been issued, three of which were declared illegal and quashed. We intend to appeal against the last refusal, which is issued in March of this year.
According to Mr Shounin, the last refusal to initiate criminal proceedings repeats one word for word the previous one which was quashed by the Prosecutor’s Office as illegal. “However, the Prosecutor’s Office stance did not embarrass investigator Aleksey Shoshin and again he issued identical refusal with poorly proven conclusions that the bodily injuries of Kamzolov and Abramova might have developed a day prior to their contact with the officers of the extra-departmental guard”, – Mr Shounin reported.
Due to this the lawyers with the Committee for the Prevention of Torture have already applied to head of the regional Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee Andrey Vinogradov asking to bring Aleksey Shoshin to disciplinary responsibility. Human rights defenders also filed a lawsuit on behalf of the victims on compensation of moral damage inflicted to them with inefficient check of their crime report.